Art and the Artist - Avery Brown

I chose Seamus Heaney's poem Postscript. The quote, "The artist speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives, to our sense of pity and beauty, and pain”, (Joseph Conrad) resonates with my opinion on art and life, as well as its relevant to the poem. In the first line of the poem Heaney suggest to the read to travel, to go somewhere beautiful, but in this case, its to travel out west. Heaney talks about the simplicity but beauty of "...when the wind/And the light are working off each other/So that the ocean on one side is wild/With foam and glitter..." Creating the basis for a mental picture in the readers mind, Heaney take the simple nature of sea foam and the windy waves and making them into something purely intricate for us to admire and appreciate. The author intimates our curiosity and admiration for and of nature and the world around us. Conrad says, "The artist speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder", so we have that aspect of joy and curiosity but then goes on say, "...to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives..." as if to say that there is still many things we don't know about the world we live in, but the statement is quite true. We can see these points in the poem. In line 12 Heaney states, "Useless to think you'll park or capture it/More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there," He might be referring to the waves and crests in line 11, or some deep philosophical idea that I can't wrap my head around at the present time. But he says that line almost mocking the fact that we probably wont grasp the idea he's referring to.